Cagle World

Over the past few weeks, media outlets have reported that holiday consumers should expect a shortage of Christmas trees this year due to the supply-chain crisis, climate change and the trees themselves refusing to re-enter the workforce after becoming addicted to Netflix and Flamin’ Hot Cheetos during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Although I believe the reports (along with everything else I read on Facebook), I haven’t felt the impact of the shortage myself. In fact, I just recently upgraded to a 9 ft. artificial Christmas tree from Hobby Lobby for 50% off­­ – and I only ruptured two major organs (and an air bag) cramming it into my wife’s compact vehicle because she drove our SUV to work that day.

My family has always decorated with artificial Christmas trees. In fact, we’ve been displaying the same artificial pencil-style Christmas trees in our home for the past decade or so because we’re all about sustainability – and, according to Facebook, buyers in past years have brought home real trees that are accidentally accessorized with live woodland animals like hawks, owls, snakes and raccoons.

A family in Australia even found a live koala in their Christmas tree – and not the stuffed version with the Velcro paws.

Although it might actually be kind of neat to find one of these critters in a Christmas tree, I’m pretty sure that my three teen daughters would insist on trying to keep the stowaway wildlife as pets – and I would (as usual) somehow be placed in charge of dropping removal.

Seriously, though, I was raised on artificial Christmas trees. My earliest memories from childhood in the 1970s are of a solid white tree in the family living room. It was decorated with bright red balls, matching tinsel, and ornaments shaped like candy that I couldn’t resist sampling – repeatedly hoping that the next bite might taste like something other than asbestos.

We also occasionally trimmed a tree with ornaments that my big brother and I had made – when he didn’t have me in a headlock. Several of these decorations were the kind that displayed our elementary school portraits, most of mine featuring a hairstyle from my embarrassing chili-bowl period.

My grandmother had one of those state-of-the-art silver aluminum trees decked out with metallic blue decorations. It looked like it either belonged in Studio 54 or with Mr. Spock on the main bridge of the Starship Enterprise, which – for fledgling geeks like my brother and me – made Christmas at her house even more “fascinating.” (See what I did there?)

So, this holiday season we’ll carry on our tradition with a brand new discounted artificial Christmas tree that I’ll dread taking down sometime in late February.

I do feel a little sad that I won’t be making my yearly death-defying trip up the attic ladder to retrieve our old pencil trees in their boxes – if you could even call them boxes anymore. They’re really just geological formations of petrified duct tape holding together what once could have been described as cardboard. I think I might just leave them up there permanently for my three daughters to discover someday when I’m gone – and give them one last reason to be annoyed with me.

Despite the possible Christmas tree shortage, my hope is that you and your family are able to enjoy this wonderful holiday season when we share gifts with our loved ones to celebrate the Lord’s most miraculous gift to us all.

And if you do manage to bring home a live tree this year, may you enjoy its natural beauty, revel in its fresh scent, and check under it periodically for koala droppings.

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Copyright 2021 Jase Graves distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Graves is an award-winning humor columnist from East Texas. His columns have been featured in Texas Escapes magazine, The Shreveport Times, The Longview News Journal, and The Kilgore News Herald. Contact Graves at [email protected].

These days, we’re all used to walking through retail stores in October and dodging Christmas displays of inflatable Baby Yoda yard art while we’re still trying to find the perfect Halloween pumpkins to decompose on our front porches.

The real holiday season mashup controversy, though, emerges in November, when we try to determine when it’s appropriate to start slipping our disks by dragging out the Christmas décor and festooning the living room with enough sparkly baubles to trigger our glitter jitters. Do we wait until we finish digesting our Thanksgiving giblets or move on into full-blown Yuletide beast mode?

I say go ahead and get jiggy with your tree trimming. Because let’s face it. Thanksgiving, while a worthy exercise in expressing gratitude for our blessings by replacing all of our bodily fluids with gravy, is a little like a pre-game warmup for Christmas. In fact, you’re likely to have some Thanksgiving leftovers mutating in your refrigerator when December 25 rolls around.

So why not combine the celebrations into a giant two-month carb-laden extravaganza? Besides, the two holidays already have a lot in common.

For instance, both involve eating until you doubt your self-worth and your digestive skills. Not only that, but we enjoy some of the same foods at Thanksgiving and Christmas–including that cranberry sauce that comes out of the can looking like a sunburned segment of a giant earthworm.

Both holidays also involve experiencing an entire year’s allotment of family irritation within the space of around twelve hours. No wonder grandmother lives over the river and through the woods.

And that particular song reminds me that both holidays have classic Charlie Brown specials-the best! (I still think Snoopy deserves a good old-fashioned neutering.)

Most importantly, these celebrations give us a chance to thank the Lord for the greatest gift ever given to humanity. And I really don’t think He gives a rip that Starbucks starts selling the Peppermint Mocha Frappuccino the first week of November.

I realize this philosophy will draw the ire of Thanksgiving purists who relegate Santa, Rudolph, Frosty, the Grinch, Scrooge, Ralphie in his pink bunny pajamas, Buddy the Elf, and Cousin Eddie in his bath robe to holiday quarantine until the clock strikes midnight after Turkey Day. (Ironically, these are probably the same folks who keep a forgotten string of elderly Christmas lights clinging to their houses for dear life year round.)

I’ve always loved both holidays and never could resist humming a few Christmas carols while unpacking our ceramic turkey salt and pepper shakers in early November. I’ve even been known to start putting out Christmas decorations, a few at a time, in the run-up to Thanksgiving, and no one seems to be bothered by it. (Then again, I’m pretty sure I could install a life-sized replica of Cousin Eddie’s dilapidated RV in the middle of the living room, and my three teenage daughters wouldn’t notice – unless it interfered with the WiFi.)

Yes, I agree that Thanksgiving is an important occasion and deserving of its own traditions (especially the pie), but I also believe in bipartisanship, and if Santa wants a seat at my Thanksgiving table, he is always welcome to an extra slice of canned cranberry sauce.

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Copyright 2021 Jase Graves distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Graves is an award-winning humor columnist from East Texas. His columns have been featured in Texas Escapes magazine, The Shreveport Times, The Longview News Journal, and The Kilgore News Herald. Contact Graves at [email protected].

If you ever want to test the limits of your patience, your sanity and your ability to avoid bursting your gizzard from laughing out loud at exactly the wrong moment – in church – try teaching a junior high boys’ Sunday school class sometime.

You’ll thank me or hunt me down to kill me… or maybe both.

My parents started bringing me to church from the time my mother thought I was just an annoying gas bubble, and they continued taking me until the pains I caused went far beyond anything a dose of Mylanta could relieve. So you might say Sunday school is in my blood – or at least my bowels.

My wife and I have been teaching our three daughters’ Sunday school classes since they were in kindergarten. In fact, I’ve been told that teaching kids’ Sunday school is my spiritual gift. But after doing it for 18 years, I’m pretty sure it’s a spiritual gag gift, and God has enjoyed every minute of it.

When we taught elementary-age Sunday school, it was all crafts, Bible stories, and sing-alongs. The main things I worried about then were getting someone to the potty in time (including myself), misplacing someone during a trip to the potty, or failing to memorize the Bible verse of the week and being shown up by some seven-year-old theological prodigy who could recite the Lord’s Prayer in Aramaic – on the way to the potty.

But the real fun of teaching Sunday school to elementary-age kids was getting them in a circle on the carpet for group prayer time, when some of them took the opportunity to reveal their most embarrassing family secrets. What started out as a solemn and reverent time of sharing often transformed into a combination of “Dr. Phil,” “Maury,” and “Kids Say the Darndest Things.” If, for example, someone prayed for their Aunt Roxanne’s impending fourth marriage to take place in the county detention center visitor’s area, all I could do to maintain order was say a quick “Amen” and ask if anyone needed to go to the potty. (Everyone always did.)

And speaking of the potty, I’m currently teaching a class of junior high boys, which is like trying to discuss theology trapped in an overcrowded zoo exhibit of agitated spider monkeys. Based on my experience and careful study of classroom management techniques, I’ve found that for adolescent male children, a generous supply of Little Debbie Treats and Jolly Ranchers provides an effective, short-term source of positive reinforcement–also known as bribery.

But sometimes, even the persuasive qualities of high fructose corn syrup can’t calm the onslaught of pubescent doofusness. In fact, during a recent Sunday morning small-group lesson, I asked the boys to give me an example of how believers can offer acceptable praise to the Lord. One of my “regulars” responded by lifting his right hip and releasing a thunderous blast that ricocheted off of the hard-plastic chair and reverberated throughout the cavernous church youth building. All I could think to do was say a quick “Amen” and ask if anyone needed to go to the potty. (Everyone did.)

Moments like these only strengthen my firm belief that God has a keen sense of humor. How else can you explain ear, nose and back hair? It also reminds me that one time long ago, I, too, was a junior high goober tormenting my long-suffering Sunday school teachers with uncontrollable giggling when they read any Bible verse containing the word “loins.”

I guess it’s true that “what goes around comes around,” and lots of problems can still be solved with a quick trip to the potty. Amen!

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Copyright 2021 Jase Graves distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Graves is an award-winning humor columnist from East Texas. His columns have been featured in Texas Escapes magazine, The Shreveport Times, The Longview News Journal, and The Kilgore News Herald. Contact Graves at [email protected].

Now that we are elbow-deep in the pumpkin guts of October, I’m starting to feel the holiday season kick-off excitement. It has captured my imagination ever since I was a young lad overdosing on Brach’s Mellowcreme Pumpkins and memorizing the Sears Holiday Wish Book when I should’ve been diagramming sentences or deciphering the dark sorcery of fractions.

But like Sears, which is currently in retail ICU, Halloween just ain’t what it used to be – especially since my three daughters are now teenagers and barely acknowledge me as a semi-solid state of matter.

When the girls were little, one of the highlights of my year was helping them get dressed up to go trick-or-treating, always watching out for their wellbeing as I conducted random taste tests of their treats – just the chocolate ones – for safety.

For the past few years, though, instead of some innocent trick-or-treating, my two older daughters have focused on the frightening and macabre side of the holiday – namely teenage boys. And due to the COVID-19 pandemic spoiling last year’s Halloween night, my youngest daughter had to settle for staying home and seeing how many Kit Kats she could consume without throwing up on her iPhone.

Even our family tradition of gathering in the garage a few days before Halloween night to carve jack-o’-lanterns has been disrupted by the ravages of puberty (theirs-not mine). For 17 years straight, we would scrape, gouge and slice until the floor of our garage looked like the Great Pumpkin just gave birth. And once the carving was finished, I’d chase the girls around the front yard in an old sheet listening to them squeal with delight and trying not to trip and rupture a major organ (mine, not theirs).

Last year, nobody was interested in carving a single pumpkin, and my wife wouldn’t let me wear a sheet and run around the front yard by myself – or chase her.

And speaking of ghosts, it’s a lot tougher to give the girls a harmless scare these days (except when I walk through the house shirtless). I used to enjoy giving them the willies with my story of the giant “ghost skunk” that lurked around outside, waiting to spray young girl children who complained about their dad’s jokes and fashion choices. Since the girls all became teenagers, though, I’m the one constantly terrified that one of them is going to come home holding hands with some dude named Blade, Diesel or Maximus.

Yes, I understand that change is inevitable, and it’s usually best to embrace it–or at least give it a side hug. And I do love my teen daughters dearly, even if they would rather spend time with boys who still don’t have to shave their ears.

I’m not giving up on Halloween quite yet, though. In fact, since Dr. Fauci recently released the holiday out of quarantine from his basement, I was thrilled when my youngest daughter asked me to take her trick-or-treating this year (maybe for the last time) – if I promise to stay out of her Kit Kats.

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Copyright 2021 Jase Graves distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Graves is an award-winning humor columnist from East Texas. His columns have been featured in Texas Escapes magazine, The Shreveport Times, The Longview News Journal, and The Kilgore News Herald. Contact Graves at [email protected].

Raising three daughters has come with many delights, challenges, prayers and moments standing in that certain aisle at Target trying to figure out the differences between “ultra,” “Infinity FlexFoam,” “overnight,” “sport,” “wings,” “Radiant,” and “Just ask your wife, you goober.”

One ordeal that all parents are destined to endure at some point is the dreaded school project – specifically designed by educators to exact revenge upon parents who actually believe that their child is “a joy to teach.”

When our daughters first started school, I made an arrangement with my wife that I would assist with all of the projects if she would handle anything related to the evils of mathematics. After helping with enough school projects to qualify for a concealed glue gun license, I’ve found that what should be an opportunity for some father-daughter bonding usually ends up with someone getting their feelings hurt and crying – and it’s not always me.

Another challenge I face is trying to determine how much “help” to offer on a school project versus how much to risk having one of my daughters injure herself or, more importantly, the sheetrock.

One of the first school projects I remember our girls being assigned was the infamous leaf collection, which often involved committing third-degree trespassing and assault upon innocent foliage. Inevitably, the final specimen that we needed to complete the project required that I jump around in the dark like a drunk baboon trying to reach the perfect bundle of loblolly pine needles –because my eldest and most expensive daughter insisted that the ones all over the ground weren’t “pretty anymore.”

Another foray into school projects involved creating a shoebox diorama of a scene from E.B. White’s traumatic children’s novel “Charlotte’s Web.” This project required that we artistically design Wilbur’s barnyard from a shoebox once containing a pair of Gianni Bini pumps that never quite fit me right. As my daughters and I worked, we powered through tears brought on by molten strands of hot glue and that chapter where the beloved Charlotte dies after becoming the only arachnid in history we didn’t want to squash with a flip-flop.

I also remember helping my eldest and middle daughters bake and decorate cakes meant to represent cross sections of human skin for science class. Yes, that’s right, skin cakes – fully furnished with a pale-pink epidermis frosting, melted Tootsie Roll hair shafts, Sour Punch Straw sweat glands, and subcutaneous tissue made from Hickory Farms Mini Meltaway Mints. I don’t know about you, but I have a hard time getting excited about sweat glands for dessert, which is probably why I only had four servings.

Most recently, my youngest daughter was tasked with assembling a three-dimensional model of a phosphorus atom. Prior to helping with this project, I didn’t know much about phosphorus – other than I’ve eaten lots of it, according to the Honey Nut Cheerios box.

Apparently, though, making a model of phosphorus requires at least $50, about five trips to Michael’s and one full weekend down the tubes. The trick was finding a way to assemble three outer rings that would hold the electron thingies without teaching my daughter any new curse words. The teacher’s instructions recommended using household objects, but my daughter just rolled her eyes when I suggested an old toilet seat.

We eventually figured it out, and the model was so “phosphorusy” that the teacher asked to keep it as an example. (I wonder if she has received my bill yet.)

Despite all of the hot glue injuries, spray paint fumes, and general arts and crafts trauma, I still think I got the better end of the deal I made with my wife all those years ago. And I’ll bet if you ask any of our girls, they’ll tell you that through it all, I’ve been “a joy to teach.”

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Copyright 2021 Jase Graves distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Graves is an award-winning humor columnist from East Texas. His columns have been featured in Texas Escapes magazine, The Shreveport Times, The Longview News Journal, and The Kilgore News Herald. Contact Graves at [email protected].

Before a couple of weeks ago, it had been over twenty years since my wife and I attended a Texas A&M football game.

That’s partly because we’ve spent the past two decades or so raising three daughters, who’ve been more interested in spending our cash on hamsters, horses, dance recitals and any product manufactured by the Apple corporation than football tickets. To make our game attendance even more unlikely, watching my beloved alma mater play football makes me so nervous that my innards feel like I just ate a large family of live hedgehogs.

Now that our eldest and most expensive daughter is herself a Texas A&M Aggie, I’ve run out of excuses not to go watch the Aggies give me apocalyptic indigestion live. In fact, we broke our streak on a recent trip to College Station to bring our daughter a new debit card after hers finally vaporized.

After dining on some scrumptious cooking grease disguised as burgers and fries, we headed to my daughter’s townhome to park and then walk a mile to Kyle Field for the game. Although we wanted to park closer, parking spots at Texas A&M on game days are about as rare as a sighting of University of Texas superfan Matthew McConaughey playing a set of Aggie-themed bongos in the nude.

Luckily, it was early September in the Brazos Valley, which meant that our stroll was nice and crisp, in the sense that over-fried bacon is crisp, then steamed in an Instant Pot – that catches fire. My youngest daughter, who has an aversion to most physical movement, was convinced that she would die of acute climate change at any moment, and she would only roll her eyes when I repeatedly asked her if she wanted to borrow some of my deodorant.

We were almost saved from the sidewalk lava by one of the convenient university shuttle busses, but by the time we ran up to board, it was stuffed to capacity with college students selfishly enjoying the air-conditioning and probably praying that the Griswold family wouldn’t try to squeeze in.

When we finally reached Kyle Field, our daughters rehydrated with some concession-stand burritos and giant pretzels, and we found our seats –along with about 100,000 other sweaty Aggies. It was like being in a massive open-air locker room after running laps in junior high P.E. – minus the jock straps and AXE body spray.

Once the game began, I felt like I was back in college – enthusiastically doing the Aggie yells, singing “The Aggie War Hymn,” and looking forward to that first Aggie score – when I could score a kiss from my best girl (if my youngest daughter and her enormous pretzel hadn’t been in the way). In the part of the War Hymn where Aggies lock arms and sway back and forth to “Saw Varsity’s horn’s off,” I suddenly found myself in the burly, one-armed embrace of my neighboring fellow Aggie, who was roughly the size of André the Giant. (Needless to say, I didn’t ask him if he’d like to borrow my deodorant.)

True to form, the Aggies had me chewing my fingernails down to my elbows until they pulled away in the second half for an old­­-fashioned blowout, the only kind of Aggie game my guts can enjoy.

We finished our weekend in Aggieland the next day with a guided tour by our eldest daughter of the buildings where she attends her classes, a visit to the campus bookstore to break what was left of the bank on Aggie sweatshirts and stuffed animals, and a stop for some delicious drinks at the local Dutch Bros Coffee, which is kind of like Starbucks–only more Dutch.

It was a truly great weekend visiting with our daughter, enjoying the game, and reminiscing about our college days. And I’m actually kind of looking forward to attending another football game – if I can convince my stomach to come along with me.

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Copyright 2021 Jase Graves distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Graves is an award-winning humor columnist from East Texas. His columns have been featured in Texas Escapes magazine, The Shreveport Times, The Longview News Journal, and The Kilgore News Herald. Contact Graves at [email protected].

Many parents my age are currently experiencing empty nest syndrome/euphoria as they send their children off to college in hopes that, someday, their “babies” will graduate and come back home to pick up all of the junk they left crammed under their beds.

For my wife and I, this condition is more like multiple nest disorder – since we still have two kids at home after moving our eldest and most expensive daughter into a lavish four-bedroom college townhome festooned with all of the latest overpriced swag from Urban Outfitters.

The ordeal of moving our daughter into her new “crib” actually started last spring, when she began stockpiling unknown merchandise in massive shipping boxes that were specifically designed to give me a hernia.

Then came moving day, when we packed enough clothing, linens, electronics, decorative string lights, salt lamps, cosmetics, and a few uncomfortable humans into our vehicles to make another bad reboot of “The Beverly Hillbillies.” We were only able to salvage a minimal level of coolness thanks to the chassis of our beleaguered 2013 Ford Expedition sitting so close to the ground that I felt compelled to play the “Lowrider” song on repeat throughout the 3 ½-hour trip.

When we arrived at the townhome, I was actually excited by the prospect of finally using the hand truck that my dad gifted to me out of pity sometime in the early twenty-teens. Thank goodness my daughter’s bedroom is only up one flight of incredibly narrow stairs!

Once we had transported all of the cargo upstairs and I had said a brief prayer requesting a new spinal column, my wife and daughter began organizing clothing while I was tasked with putting stuff together and hanging other stuff on walls.

One of my greatest fears has always been the combination of an Allen wrench and the phrase “some assembly required.” But after only three attempts, I did manage to construct a three-tier shoe rack for storing enough designer footwear to support a full season of “Project Runway.”

I then continued the assault on my lumbar region by attaching a never-ending adhesive strip of LED lights across the top of the bedroom walls. When I was finished and the multi-colored lights began flashing, I expected the Village People to burst through the bathroom door for an encore of “Y.M.C.A.” at any moment.

And speaking of the Village People, my next job was to hang some vinyl record albums on the wall – for decoration. When I suggested that my daughter might actually want to listen to the records sometime, she just patted me on the head Benny Hill-style, and said, “Sure, Dad.”

After the room was finished and my daughter’s Wi-Fi life-support system was fully operational, we all went downstairs, had a good cry, smothered our sorrows with some enormous slices of homemade pound cake, had another good cry, and said our goodbyes.

Although I felt like I left a little chunk of my heart (and a few vertebrae) in that townhouse when we drove away, my daughter does stay in regular contact with us. Along with “Facetiming” us most evenings to report on dates she has taken with our credit cards to concerts, restaurants, and Target, she occasionally calls us to address typical college-student household issues–like trying to convince us that fitted sheets were invented by the Taliban. Oh, and she is trying to carve out a little time for classes and homework.

Now that she’s out of the nest – sort of – I’m just looking forward to the day when she comes back home after graduation to pick up all of that junk she left crammed under her bed.

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Copyright 2021 Jase Graves distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Graves is an award-winning humor columnist from East Texas. His columns have been featured in Texas Escapes magazine, The Shreveport Times, The Longview News Journal, and The Kilgore News Herald. Contact Graves at [email protected].

Many parents (including my wife and I) are currently in the process of moving their precious partly-grown child-people (and some of their credit cards) to institutions of higher education for the first time so that these students can gain vital professional knowledge and skills, including how to get those pad thingies back into sports bras correctly when they come out of the dryer.

Based on my vast lack of expertise, other than my own college experience back in the 1990’s when it was cool to dress like a disheveled version of the Brawny paper towel dude, I have a few tips to help incoming college freshpersons (especially my eldest and most expensive daughter) adapt to spending their parents’ money away from home.

Before embarking on this new adventure, college students need to secure a few key items, including an industrial strength toilet brush and plunger set. Because typical college students consume a steady diet of pizza, Kraft macaroni and cheese, and microwaved nachos, the plunger is sure to be put to regular use. And although the toilet brush is unlikely ever to be employed for its intended purpose, it makes a handy back scratcher during extended potty/cell phone time.

Once college students are settled in, they should try to get to know their professors on the rare occasions when said students actually attend class. In fact, it’s advisable for students to visit the professor during office hours when the professor is probably bored and watching reruns of “Little House on the Prairie” on Amazon Prime. During these meetings, students have a chance to distinguish themselves through small gestures of kindness, like offering to hose off the professor’s electric­ vehicles­ – or children.

If students want to make an especially positive impression, they could volunteer to give the professor’s cat its pills. When the professor is averaging grades at the end of the semester, it couldn’t hurt to be recognized as the student who risked a thorough eyeball clawing so Miss Whiskers could be worm-free.

Because the weekly grind of sleeping through classes and starting the weekend on Tuesday afternoon can be extremely stressful for a college student, it’s important to let off some steam every once in a while. However, any leisure activities must exclude the following at all costs: sex, drugs, facial tattoos, sex, drinking, public nudity, sex, watching “Outer Banks,” dressing up like stuffed animals, sex and sex. Other than these strictly prohibited activities, enjoy!

One worthwhile extra-curricular pursuit that I’ve strongly recommended to my daughter is regular church attendance. Let’s say she’s invited to an “Animal House”-style toga party by a young man who needs a good kick in the baptistry. As an alternative, she should go down to the local First Church of the Immaculate Covered Dish for Sunday services, throw on a choir robe, and have a party near the pulpit. I’ve assured her that plenty of cool and interesting guys will be there, including the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Despite my words of advice and all of the preparations we’ve made, I must admit that I’m still a little nervous about sending our daughter off to college. She’ll face lots of challenges as she decides how to most efficiently squander our life savings.

Seriously, though, at least her mother and I can find comfort in knowing that she’s well-equipped for college life with a high-quality toilet brush and plunger set.

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Copyright 2021 Jase Graves distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Graves is an award-winning humor columnist from East Texas. His columns have been featured in Texas Escapes magazine, The Shreveport Times, The Longview News Journal, and The Kilgore News Herald. Contact Graves at [email protected].

With blistering summer weather in full force and shiny new COVID-19 variants emerging like another season of “The Bachelor,” many Americans have taken to the great outdoors–despite recently reported attacks by grizzly bears, alligators, and President Joe Biden’s surviving German shepherd, Major (R.I.P. Champ).

And speaking of cantankerous canines, I normally limit my own experiences with nature to mowing my yard and taking evening walks with my wife around our subdivision–where we sometimes encounter local mongrels whom the neighbors have let out to marinate the mailboxes. These loving pets often use their potty breaks as a chance to threaten us with a good old-fashioned scalp mauling. In these perilous moments, I always do the gallant husband-type thing and position myself between the lunging lawn sausages and my wife – while praying that if I do soil myself, it won’t be caught on video and uploaded to TikTok.

It may surprise you, then, that when I accompanied my wife on a recent business trip to the beautiful Tanglewood Resort and Conference Center at Lake Texoma on the border of Texas and Oklahoma, I willingly risked life, limb, and my clean, fresh scent to go hiking. Yes, hiking – also known as walking in places you shouldn’t.

While my wife was in meetings, I could have participated in striped bass fishing, pontoon boating, or having my back hairs moisturized at Tanglewood’s Tranquility Spa and Salon. But since most of these activities required that I get out of bed before noon, I decided, instead, to sleep late, put on my “Welcome Ticks!” sandwich board and head out to the hiking trails.

When I asked the front desk clerk for directions to the trails, she replied, “Well, we’re not really recommending the hiking trails at the moment due to the snakes and the hogs, but you can do what you want.”

The Snakes and the Hogs? Weren’t those the gangs in “West Side Story”? Anyway, I wasn’t about to let a bunch of woodland hoodlums and their homies deter me from possibly getting a heat rash and dislocating my pinky toes.

Once I found the trailhead and noticed that it introduced a steep, gravelly descent through the woods and toward the lake, I immediately began to question my choice in footwear – a pair of Nike Air Assault sneakers purchased five years ago in the dad-shoe section at Academy Sports + Outdoors. Luckily, I only did the slipping-splits a couple of times, which made my groin feel like I had just lost to Simone Biles on the balance beam.

I was actually hoping I might spot some forest wildlife, but I guess the snakes and hogs were napping after preying on the hikers who got up before lunch. I did, however, notice a few feral beer cans and one rare North American toilet seat that some nature-lover had mercifully released into the wild.

When I finally stumbled to the trail’s end that revealed a vast marina on the lake, the air temperature was roughly the same as the Walmart parking lot in mid-August, which called for extreme life-saving measures. In other words, I took off my shirt–in public–a shocking act of exhibitionism that scandalized a nearby flock of Canadian geese who promptly regretted their migration decisions.

After I had hiked back up the trail and made it to the safety of air-conditioning, I felt proud and invigorated. In fact, I somehow convinced my wife to go hiking with me the next day. (We’re still feeling hopeful about the marriage counseling.)

Seriously, though, hiking did give me a chance to get in touch with the natural world for a change. Most of all, it made me thankful that the good Lord designed His beautiful creation in all its variety for us to enjoy–except for, maybe, the snakes and the hogs.

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Copyright 2021 Jase Graves distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Graves is an award-winning humor columnist from East Texas. His columns have been featured in Texas Escapes magazine, The Shreveport Times, The Longview News Journal, and The Kilgore News Herald. Contact Graves at [email protected].

Even with this year’s emotionally jarring MLB season – featuring widespread fan misbehavior, COVID-19 postponements, and a game suspension caused by a shooting in Washington, D.C. – it’s generally accepted (as stated by Jimmy Dugan in the film “A League of Their Own”) that “There’s no crying in baseball.”

Well, apparently, Tom Hanks has never been a fan of the hapless, heartbreaking Texas Rangers. The Rangers are currently having one of their worst seasons ever, and that’s saying something.

In fact, the only time I’ve ever “almost” wept over a sporting event (other than that time I accidentally put on my athletic cup backwards in junior high football) was in game six of the 2011 World Series when the Rangers lost to St. Louis after coming within one strike of winning the whole box of puppies – twice.

I was so distraught that I could barely bring myself to watch them go down in ultimate defeat in game seven, wishing I had chosen, instead, to witness something less tragic – like a double feature of “Old Yeller” and “Titanic.”

And here they are again, stumbling through the 2021 season like President Joe Biden trying to navigate a spiral staircase on roller skates. But that didn’t stop me from joining my family on a recent trip to Arlington, Texas, to watch the perennially putrid Rangers suffer in brand-new Globe Life Field, which, from the outside, looks like a giant mobile home under construction.

Fortunately, we were gifted with some tickets in a luxury suite with its own private restroom, which makes nine innings of slaughter a bit more tolerable. The suite included a buffet of hamburgers, hot dogs, nachos, sodas, popcorn, candy, peanuts, ice cream and all the other reasons we needed a private restroom.

Once the initial novelty wore off (after about two pitches) and I had devoured every edible item in the suite, my youngest teenage daughter grew bored and began accusing me of causing climate change by throwing peanut shells on the floor of the seating area. She then challenged me in a mixed-martial-arts tickle fight. Did I mention we had a private restroom?

My middle daughter insisted on spending the bulk of the game exploring the stadium’s concession areas on a quest for sushi. Yes, that’s right, sushi – at a baseball game. And, to my disbelief, she found some – for only about the price of an official Texas Rangers jersey signed by Nolan Ryan and stained with the blood of Robin Ventura.

Naturally, I tried some of this elusive ballpark cuisine. Did I mention we had a private restroom?

Watching the Rangers flail around on the field brought back memories of my own ignominious experience with America’s pastime in little league. Although my long suffering dad tried his best to help me hold the bat correctly, keep my eye on the ball, and stop gnawing on my glove in the outfield, I never could accept that being an effective baseball player required occasional running – and practice doing something other than visiting the concession stand.

Still, I did enjoy our family trips to the old Arlington Stadium to watch the Rangers lose in the 1970s. I remember the faint aroma of cigarette smoke mingled with cotton candy, popcorn, and all the ballpark delights to distract a kid from whatever the score was at the time. At one game, Mom and Dad even bought me a little stuffed Texas Rangers doll that I named “Billy Martin” after the volatile and often hilarious Rangers manager at the time.

These days, I only get out my Billy Martin doll when the Rangers make a rare, ill-fated playoff run (or during scary thunderstorms.)

Yes, the Texas Rangers are having an embarrassing season – again. Yes, they have resorted to slinging second-rate sushi at their stadium. And I still haven’t forgiven them for kinda sorta making me cry when they lost the World Series. But they do have their moments, and I can’t help rooting (secretly) for the team I loved as a kid, especially when I can go to a game and have my own private restroom.

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Copyright 2021 Jase Graves distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Graves is an award-winning humor columnist from East Texas. His columns have been featured in Texas Escapes magazine, The Shreveport Times, The Longview News Journal, and The Kilgore News Herald. Contact Graves at [email protected].